


http://www.ledaonline.dyadgames.com

by hotskytrotsky



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: AU, Multi, Nobody knows, Virtual Reality, is cosima high for the entire fic?, video games - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-05
Updated: 2015-03-25
Packaged: 2018-02-11 22:25:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 7,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2085456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hotskytrotsky/pseuds/hotskytrotsky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Several women from all around the world find themselves sucked one-by-one into a fantasy-steampunk game called Leda Online. Then things start getting weird around level 50 - like, a team full of identical avatars, government conspiracy, virtual reality bleeding into reality reality weird. At least it's only a game...right?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. introducing the oracle and her student

**Author's Note:**

> I'm planning this work to be made up of many short chapters, each from a different perspective. The timeline with respect to canon OB may be a bit fuzzy at the beginning but I'm hoping to clear that up in-story.

>usa

>berkeley, ca

The light is blue and dim, flickering as the lecturer flips from slide to slide.

“You should try it,” murmurs Delphine out of the corner of her mouth. Her hand scribbles lazily, elegantly, pen dangling from the tips of almost-straight fingers, against the surface of my notebook. She’s got long cellist fingers. They could be  _so_  multipurpose. My breath follows the twisting, waxing and waning shapes formed by the line of the pen and the curve of finger and hand.

                Delphine wears a white blouse today, with sleeves rolled short and cloth billowing over her skinny shoulders like the petals of a lily. I have always thought lilies looked sort of ravenous - tiny suction cups ready to ensnare any buzzing bumblebee brainless enough to wander near. But no - carnivorous plants isn’t till Tuesday. I haven’t even done the pre-lab. And that course - that course has the misfortune to be absent ravishing ravenous lilies murmuring, “You should try it.”

                The Venn diagram of our lives is so broadly spread and multichromatic that the only overlapping slice of purple in the middle is titled in neat, blocky letters - “Physics 212”. Two hundred and twelve, that’s the number of hours per week I spend doing homework for that goddamn course. Though to be certain, it might go faster if I didn’t stop to smell the lilies along the way. But where’s the fun in that?

                I whisper, husky - because it’s dark and Delphine is close, as are thousands of other breathing beating bodies, but they aren’t glowing white-blue in the dampened light, and they don’t have brewing coffee eyes like hers - “What’s it called, again?”

                Delphine’s pen taps the paper. Her eyes dart down to the find the URL, scribbled moments before by that very pen and that very hand. Her hands could be  _so_ multipurpose. Pens, too, I suppose. I swallow dryly.

                “You really,” whispers Delphine, a playful damning smile coming slowly into being around the corner of her mouth. “Have made it into graduate-level biology? With a - um, what is it - an attention span like this?”

                “That’s me,” I say thickly. I’m aware that my voice is louder than all the other noises of the room - the quiet buzz of the projector, the lecturer’s disinterested drawl, Delphine’s hushed and breathy whispers. I claim, “I’m a goldfish.”

                The students around us begin to pack up their books, despite the lecturer’s protests. Be quiet, please, he says. I’ll take questions in the last ten minutes. The students say lunch friends phones classes homework no time for questions we must  _assume_ and not  _ask_ or surely we’ll be late to something very important. We are scientists; we know everything. The only questions of relevance are can we re-take the midterm if we fail and what is the point breakout for this class.

                I glower down at the crowd filling the ampitheatrical lecture hall. That’s Scott, my dear friend, asking likely an incredibly provoking question which I can’t  _hear_ because of all the din -

                Then my attention, too, turns away from Scott as Delphine exclaims, “Oh! I forgot. Here, also, is my user name.”

                The shape of the pen and finger and ink and paper makes curling cursive letters, of a standard-issue, hit-your-fingers-with-a-ruler, variety still found in French schools:  _the-oracle._

“The oracle,” say I, voice cracking with half a chuckle.

                “Of Delphi,” finishes Delphine. “Because my name -“

                I grins teasingly. “I know.”

                “Oh,” Delphine remarks pointlessly, flushing. “Not that I thought you wouldn’t -“

                “Just shut up,” I giggle, pulling her white-lily arm which is not so fragile as it looks, and not-dragging the girl (for she goes willingly, only playing at being a dead weight under my eager hands) out into the midday sunshine for a cup of tea or coffee and a slice of free-speech-and-apple pastry.

Then we lie, half in dappled shade and half in light, in the lee of a building that is a monument to science. BACTERIOLOGY looms in giant, marble-cast letters over our messy heads. At Columbia they have that library - I remember from my oh-shit-I’m-almost-eighteen tour of the country’s best colleges - decked out in the names of old dead white guys. Here - I breathe in the sweet green air and hold it, as if smoking - here they celebrate  _science_ and not  _people._ The important things. BACTERIOLOGY. PHYSIOLOGY. PSYCHOLOGY. None of that Plato business. It is grand and warm and if the lawn looks fine, the marble looks finer.

  We celebrate Science, and Friday, and we celebrate PHYS 212: The Physics of Microstructures. We celebrate the purple in our Venn diagram for one slow, sweet green-and-yellow hour.


	2. introducing a husband and wife

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alison lends Donnie a hand.

>canada

>toronto, on

                “Cutie pie,” I say.

                He types.

                I sigh, “No, not with an _ey._ With an _-ie_.”

                He types again, erasing his mess. The tiny box demanding **Username?** becomes empty again - and I breathe a sigh of relief. I love the empty white space of my crafts room, calling out to me to bring a project into life on its surface. I love my clean, spare house, beckoning life to enter and bloom inside. Though no one yet lives in it, I Febreeze the upstairs bedroom daily so it smells like soap and lilac.

                It won’t smell too nice when we paint it, I shouldn’t think. We should get it over with - I keep reminding myself. My to-do list has already got so darned long - so busy am I! - and only mid-week! - and it’s bound to take a long time, too, since I can hardly reach all the nooks and crannies and Donnie cant be trusted with anything so delicate as the _trim_. But I can’t yet choose the color; not until at least seventeen weeks, they said.

                Yellow is a nice neutral. It’s a cop-out. Alison Hendrix does _not_ stand for cop-outs - certainly not where home decoration is concerned!

                I am not a cop-out. I’ve always thought video games are for children whose parents don’t care about them and adult degenerates, but Donnie’s taking this darn soc class. It’s part of a study, he says, on how men and women make decisions differently. Everyone has to enroll a partner of the opposite sex in this popular OMM or MMO or whatever. Well, if it’s so popular, why do we have to sign up new players? Donnie says they can’t use players’ data without their consent. But I read this article in _Redbook_ about how the government collects data from online shopping and it’s totally legal. Some of the book club gals and I are talking about writing a petition.

                I was saying - I am not a cop-out. If I have to save Donnie’s soc project by playing this silly game, I am going to see it through until the end of the semester. Donnie says he gets extra credit if we both get to level 50. And Heavens knows Donnie could use a little extra credit.

                “Just let me do it,” I say tersely, knocking Donnie’s large frame out of the way so I can lay my hands on the keyboard.

                **cutiepie,** I type.

                **Sorry! This username is already in use. Please choose another.**

“It’s just as well,” Donnie contributes. “No offense, Ali, but nobody’s going to take you seriously with a name like…”

                “Shut. Up. Donnie,” I growl. It’s becoming something of a catchphrase around our house. I know this; and it bothers me. I scrutinize my relationship with Donnie as I scrutinize my pottery for cracks and my kitchen counter for specks of grime; and any discoloration I find between us worms its way into my head and makes me fret. Oh, I know it’s only making things worse, but I can’t stop fretting! And the tighter I am strung, the more I snap, the more cracks I find, et cetera, et cetera, ad infinitum…

                I grab the keyboard from his clumsy, dirty hands.

                **xxcutiepiexx** is born.


	3. avant-garde

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Delphine helps Cosima create her avatar.

>usa

>berkeley, ca

                How those curls lie - like candlelight chandeliered around her head - if Rumpelstiltskin’s gold-spinning baby mama and Rapunzel teamed up to do hair and makeup for the Milan Fashion Week, they might have produced something like those curls.

                They shift and fluff, then fly into the air as Delphine’s head turns. I’m confronted with eyes becoming the vulnerable recipients to the heat of her own. Heat that, nearly certain, I am, will not be kindly returned. I shell up, tortoise-like, touch one finger to my nose in a meaningless gesture that they had called self-touch, for comfort; but yes, there is more than one kind of self-touch, for comfort. I have to hide the tracks of her eyes, hide the laser beams that Delphine must be able to feel heating the back of her head, the gentle curve of her shoulders in that draping cream sweater, the set of her hips when she leans forward in the desk chair.

                I blink twice and hope that might turn off the laser beams.

                “Cosima,” says Delphine. “Allo? Earth to Cosima?”

                A cough, a splutter.. “Roger that, Houston,” I say with the frog still lingering in my voice.

                “No, I am Houston,” Delphine muses. “And you are lost in space.”

                “How long have I been floating?”

                “I called for you, eh, maybe three times,” accuses the blonde woman. “And each time you did not answer me. Mmmm - you have been smoking?”

                Bad things happen in the world, like earthquakes and Delphine leaning in close to take a long, slow, sniff of my jacket. _Boom, ba-doom-doom_ , I’m sure my friend will hear the drum in my ribcage. I force myself to imagine that each breath I draw in and let go is tying itself to one of my heart’s beats, dragging the most powerful muscle along like a car being towed and retarding it in a puddle of molasses.

                “No,” said she. Veracity, veracity. I have not been smoking, though who’s to say it would matter? This isn’t a courtroom. It’s Delphine’s half-darkened, after-hours office, on the top floor of a building named after someone surely very prestigious but unfortunately in possession of a very silly surname.

                “Cosima, pull your chair up properly,” the office’s usual inhabitant demands. “I think you cannot see anything but the back of my head from there.”

                Never has blindness been so ecstatic before. I comply with regret.

                “This is the coolest part,” says Delphine, gesturing to the screen which read **Character Creation.**

                “Say _coolest_ again.”

                “Coolest,” the blonde goddess repeats.

                “Ah, okay, I’m done,” I promise, laying my hand over my heart as if I’m giving oath. No bible for my other hand, no, but I can think of a thousand other places I’d rather lay it. Hyperbole, hyperbole. You _are_ prone to that, Cosima. Not a thousand. Possibly less than ten. But ten lovely, curvaceous, beckoning places.

                “Okay, come up here,” Delphine demands of me. _Make me,_ I want to say. Instead I roll my chair up and switch positions with her, switch positions with her, the whole building must be empty by now and I can see the lights of the city through those positively excessive windows they gift upon the best and the brightest.

                She is still talking, I realize. How could I not savor every second of her speaking, pour every drop of her voice it into my ear slowly like viscous honey dribbling from a bear-shaped bottle?

                “They have this facial recognition software,” she is saying. “If you want to customize your character to look like you. It’s sometimes, eh, buggy, but…it is also incredibly smart, I think.”

                “Facial recognition, wow,” I remark dryly. “That’s, like, avant garde stuff circa 2002.”

                She never knows how to respond to me when I turn on sarcastic-little-shit mode. There’s that furrow of the brow, the crinkling around the eyes, like she doesn’t know whether to laugh or scold, whether she’s my mother or my friend. We are the same age, but I am an adolescent and Delphine is an old woman. And oh, just like my mother, do I love to give her lip. I would love to give her lip. Boyfriend is my mantra. She just broke up with her _boy._ friend.

She says, ignoring my cheek, “Well, this is very advanced, and what’s really _cool,”_ knowing I love the soft double o’s in her voice, in her accent “What’s really cool is how the software translates your information into the style they use for their graphics - it’s kind of, eh, like a cartoon.”

Now the nerd in me is turned on. I lean forward, exposing my face to the hot white light of the webcam.

“You may want to take your glasses off,” cautions Delphine.

“But they’re a part of me,” I whine. Sure enough, the exposure captured by the computer shows dazzling panes of blurred nothingness around my eyes. The lens reflected. Reflected, refracted, I’ve always hated physics because it doesn’t have that beat, that thrumming blood relevancy and intimacy of bio, of my heritage strung in interwoven genes donating a tiny piece of jellyfish and prehistoric cellular structure to my very own body - but I always hated physics before physics included oracles in white-lily shirts whispering soft nothings and oh I think she might turn me because God am I finding PHYS 212: THE PHYSICS OF MICROSTRUCTURES fascinating. But, I remind myself, people are who they are and you can’t turn them.

The second exposure, sans glasses, works a lot better. It even gets my eyeliner. Delphine’s hand snakes around my exposed bicep to dangle the apple (which, I must remind you, may not have been an apple at all, but any fruit, perhaps a pomegranate). She clicks a button and my image transforms itself, smoothing the lines of my face but keeping the tone, the color, the heavy proud line of my brows. There am I in three-D bright-colored fantasia. There am I in a beige robe that screams _high fantasy._

“So it’s like, WoW style?” I ask.

“Mmmmmmm,” waffles Delphine. “They, eh, mix fantasy elements with sort of…grunge, steam-punk. There is the wizard class, and there’s the militiaman with his pistol.”

“Or her pistol,” I say. Or xer.

“Yes, sorry,” she says graciously, bowing her head a little. I want to run my hands through her fluffy, fluffy hair and coo at her. “They separate out the levels by area…you, eh, travel across the map. When you start is very high-fantasy but as you keep going you start to see modern elements, robot bad guys, et cetera.”

“What level are you?”

“65,” she confesses. There is a hint of pride in her voice. The corners of my mouth quirk up. “Oh, but!” she blurts suddenly. “You won’t be able to play with me until you are at 50. There is, eh, a level barrier.”

“But I want to play with you,” I drawl smirkingly. Our eyes meet and I pray to whatever deity may be up there or down there that I haven’t overstepped my bounds. She must know by now, mustn’t she? So very smart is Delphine. Though - I remind myself. She is a computer scientist, and so infamously are they socially stunted.

“And I,” she says playfully, leaning in so her Goldilocks hair nearly almost very closely brushes my cheek. Inches, centimeters, it’s all a matter of relativity but the space between her hair and my skin thrums and pulses with awareness so much that it is very nearly a physical construct. “And I want to play with you. So you must to get to work.”

I swallow hard, now unable to look at her when only moments ago my eyes were magnetized to her heat, her presence, her every twitch and breath. Leaning into the screen I click through the terms and conditions and dive into playing with Delphine.


	4. introducing a gimp and a whore

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sarah gets her game on.

>usa

>new york city, ny

>the bronx

                “Just get your ass down here,” I growl into my headset. Jesus, I sound like a whiny bitch, so I follow up - “Or else.”

                “You know I can’t,” he drawls back over the line. “Can’t take a break off work just cuz your idiot crew went and got your leg broken.”

                “Ankle,” I correct. “They are idiots, though.”

                “And you’re idiot #1, then.”

                “S’pose I am,” I laugh. Call me an idiot and you’ll have your nose broken. Unless you’re my brother. Siblings work like that.

                My leg is propped up on a stack of pillows next to the table where I’m sitting. If I think about it, it starts to ache a little until all of a sudden it starts aching a _lot._ So I try not to think about. Which is tough to do since I’m just sitting here doing nothing all day. And don’t think I’m about to start reading books just cuz my ankle’s busted.

                I wish he’d come down.

                “Where are you, Sarah?” he asks suddenly. The Skype connection isn’t great, but I guess he can see the open pipes in the ceiling and the shitty wallpaper. “You’re not squatting? You can’t be a squatter with a gimpy leg.”

                “Ankle,” I correct again. “No, I’m crashing with a friend.”

                “Sammy?”

                “No, not Sammy,” I soothe him. “Diana. She’s a right bitch but she’s never home and she ain’t charging a cripple.”

                I hear him breathe relief. Sammy is as untrustworthy as they come. Well, s’pose I am too, but what can you do?

                “So you need something to do, eh?” Felix says. I get a bad feeling in my chest. “I’ve been playing Leda Online - it’s this video game -“

                “Oi!” I cut him off. “If you ain’t got time to come down and see me, how’ve you got time to be sitting on your arse playing some stupid video game?”

                “Well,” he says as if he could not be bothered to care less. “I don’t exactly keep 9-to-5 hours, sister dear.”

                 “You’ve never been a gamer before.”

                “Ok,” he admits. “So there’s this boy.”

                “Of course.”

                “Hot, twinky, geeky glasses boy.”

                “Obviously.”

                “So he hired me,” says Felix. That I wasn’t expecting. Though with all the love sex and drugs my brother attracts, he’d hardly be going to so much bother for an unpaid lay. “So he hired me to play with him.”

                “What?”

                “We play, like, twice or three times a week.”

                “And then shag,” I say.

                “Yeah,” my brother says like it’s so obvious it doesn’t need to be said. “But I think he really wants the company. One of those adorable socially awkward types.”

                I snort and say, “Gross.”

                “Right cutie though,” Felix coos. I start thinking, maybe this isn’t just a job for him. God, prostitution is so complicated these days. “Anyway, he’s started paying me in in-game currency.”

                “What!” I cry. “Fe, you’ve gotta get your head on right. Make him pay you proper or end the deal!”

                “No, no, no, Sarah,” he says, trying to soothe me. “You can exchange it for proper cash. But only once you get to level 50.”

                I wait. He waits. We look at each other through the shitty connection. There is something here, something going on.

                “I haven’t got time to sit around playing this game without getting a good shag out of it,” he finally spits out in a rush. “And look at you! You’ve got nothing _but_ time at the mo’.”

                “So you want me,” I say slowly, as if talking to a second-grader. We make each other feel like idiots. It’s how we show our love. “To play the stupid bloody game for you. Then when I get to level 50, you transfer the currency to me, and I cash out on it, and give it to you.”

                “I mean,” he drags out, rolling his eyes dramatically. “You can skim off a bit.”

                “Fe, we’re family,” I sigh. “I ain’t gonna take commission on helping you out.”

                His face brightens before he catches himself. Then he forces it to fall back into his usual ironic, _whatever,_ expression. “I knew that,” he says. “But you know, Sarah. There’s a whole economy online in this thing.”

                I wait, trying to ignore my ankle throbbing in the boot. I want more painkillers but I don’t want to get up to fetch them. I wish Fe was here to help me out, to baby me when I already feel like a helpless baby hardly able to walk on my own. I’ve never been out of commission for more than a few days before. I’m getting all twitchy and teary and I don’t like it.

                Felix continues, getting to the point at long last, “There’s thousands of transactions every day. In that online currency bollocks. But, like I said, you can cash out on it.”

                “So?”

                “So maybe you can get into the game, into the economy,” Felix tilts his head at me, unsmiling but with a smile in his eyes. “And do what you do best. All from the comfort of your chair.”

                “Hardly call it comfort,” I groan. Already my ass is starting to hurt from being in the same position so long.

                “Anyway,” says my dear Fe. “If you can wrangle like half a week’s pay for me out of these gamer bozos - I’ll put up the rest and come see you. “

                I pretend to think about it. My ankle slowly pulses in its cast.


	5. child of trees

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Delphine and Cosima continue creating their character.

>usa

>berkeley, ca

                Class and subclass. Class warfare or whatever. Class is out for the summer, only no it isn’t, I have class tomorrow, and I should be studying but, no, instead I’m high and high above the city in Delphine’s darkened office with her hand resting like coals on my forearm - she doesn’t even know it but every time I click my muscles roll under her fingers and I can feel the press, the guiding press, of the pads of her fingers into my skin. Her hand and my arm are one and the same, a merged entity, one exoskeletal extension of two nervous systems branching together like trees that are born apart at the trunk and grow together into one fantastical biological sculpture.

                “I think, the magic classes have okay range and okay area of effect, but if you really want a powerful offense…” rambles Delphine, gesturing at the screen with the hand that is not merging with my arm.

                “I just pick the one with the coolest animations,” I say. She smiles warmly at me, thinking adorable-and-stupid-Cosima, and her warm smile heats my heart so it spreads all throughout my body with the pumping of hot blood and I feel my cheeks growing warm, as cold and pale as they have been throughout the semester, wan with late nights studying and not enough time for anything but ramen, but now they grow warm and I feel alive again, like someone more than a student, like a person.

                “I am a Magician,” she offers. Of course she is. She works magic on me as easily as she enchants code to do her bidding. “Subclass: Sorcerer.”

                Then something catches my eye and Delphine scurries out of my brain, thankfully, because she’s spent far too much time in there recently and it is a breath of fresh air to be able to think and process emotion without them all going through the sieve of curly blonde hair and a soft, sweet accent. “Aw, hell yeah! Druid Magician!” I cry, clicking the appropriate button. “Power to summon animal familiars! Fuck to the yeah!”

                 “You are a child of the trees,” Delphine murmurs, as if to herself. At first I think she is whispering fanciful phrases in my ear - I could lean back, lay my head in the crook of her neck and shoulder, press my bare chapped lips to her neck - until I realize she is only reading the description of the subclass glowing on the screen.

                “Child of the trees,” I cough out. “Thaaaaat’s me, unfortunately.”

                She doesn’t get it. It was funny. Sometimes we are two ships gliding alongside each other on parallel paths, only the rims of our decks rubbing and cracking and breaking against each other, the deep dark centers of our hulls intact and miles apart; I want to turn my navigation wheel and ram right into her, crack into that hull and break open all the words she holds back, all the Delphine I can’t see from this angle. I want to crash into her and break her apart and subsume her into me so that I can know everything of her, so that I can devour every piece and fact of her and know her as well as I know myself.

But when I turn my wheel, so does she, and we stay parallel, slowly destroying the edges of ourselves and never getting to the center.


	6. introducing cheetos

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Helena joins the fun.

>????

                Ha! He think I do not know where is Pandora’s box. But I do. When he blindfolds me, ears eat the power of eyes. And I am hearing like bat. Ears can see where he walks.

                He is always going left and up and left. He goes left and up and left. Then my ears hear him talking in tongues with Pandora. He says clack clack click clack. She says whrrrrrrr whrrrrrrr and then bad music.

Yesterday he leaves. He takes big suitcase with him. So, I am thinking, he does not come back soon. He locks me in cage before leaves. He says, not punishment. But I need to keep you safe Helena. In here you are safe and no one can touch you. I love him I am very happy he does not let anyone touch me. Every day I thank God for him and I am safe from the evil ones who want to hurt me because God choose me.

 There is bottle of water hanging from ceiling that I suckle on like mother’s teat. But only small amount of food. I think, he is coming back within month. He does not let me starve.

I do not starve for month. But I am hungry. I will eat my food in three days. Greedy, slothful, Glutton! My hands are tired but when I eat food I hit back against cage.

This morning I eat and hit back against cage. I get cut, I am thinking. I cannot see. But cage gets cut, too. Then hand ties get cut.

I am hungry still. I just eat and I am hungry still. Greedy, slothful, Glutton! I hit back on cage and now I bleed. But cage bleeds, too. There is hole. I make it bigger. Now is Helena-sized hole.

Left up and left. I go left. There are stairs. I cannot climb. I bleed and legs are weak. I have been in cage for long time. I use all legs and arms like animal. At top of stairs I go left. Left up and left.

In this room there is Pandora’s box and cabinet. I open cabinet. No food. I whine and yell at cabinet. I know it does not hear me but I don’t know why I do it. Cabinet has bags of things. I open. I am not thinking Tomas will find open bags and punish me. I am not thinking. I am hungry.

In one bag is brown disks. In other is foam used for packing boxes. It is yellow. Never am I seeing yellow packing foam before. Maybe is very old. Sometimes I help Tomas pack things for his friends back home. Guns and packets of tiny rocks and little books. He is calling, “Packing Peanuts.”

I want peanuts. I smell packing peanuts. Maybe tasting like real peanuts? I put one in mouth. It taste like nothing. I bite. Still is tasting like nothing.

After minute God’s grace finds me and blesses packing peanut. Even when I am still chewing packing peanut, God blesses it and suddenly it is tasting like cheese. I say prayer for cheese while I put handful of packing peanuts in my mouth. I chew and chew and the more I chew the more God blesses my mouth with cheese.

God’s light shines upon me and room and cabinet. I am thinking, maybe he also bless brown disks. What are they? Coaster? Poker chip?

I examine. Could be poison. I survive poison before.

My eye gets close to brown disk. I am seeing, is actually two brown disks. In between is white. I put in mouth. Tasting like nothing I ever taste before. Is gross. I almost spit out. But after minute I start to think, actually taste good.

I take both bags and go to talk to Pandora. At first I think, she is dead. She is black and does not make sound. Before when I see her, twice, she glows with heavenly light and talks to me.

Tomas says Pandora’s box has forsaken the human race. I must not talk to her or open box, or I will be cursed also. I say, you talk to her. He hits me and sews me silent. But I am thinking, Tomas is God’s messenger. He talk to her. Maybe if I talk to her also, God will bless me as he blesses my master and servant. I am not ready for enlightenment - it will break soul. Tomas says do not talk to her because I am not ready. I am not learning God’s message yet.

There is Ouija board at her feet.

I want guidance. Tomas is not here. I want food and guidance. I am out of cage and I do not know what is my mission. Maybe Pandora can telephone Tomas. I don’t know where he is. I want to talk with him. I tell him I eat, break out of cage, and he punish me so Lord can forgive me.

I put my fingers on Ouija board. I say, _Where is Tomas._

I am not thinking she will answer. But she does. She glows white like sun and moon together. I scream, I am blind. But when I am blinking I see again. This is punishment for filthy Helena talking to her.

Today she wears face of blue. It says in Roman letters - _DYAD Games, Inc._ Maybe I am not reading correctly. It is not making sense.

I move clicker in circle. I don’t know why. Her face changes. Now she is asking to _log_ something. I move hand on Ouija board. I don’t know what. She says name of user. And there is box below that says continue. Yes, continue, I want to talk with Tomas.

I touch box that says continue. She says, name of user. There is space with blinking line. I think, I touch Ouija board to talk with her. I use board and write _continue._ I press box. But nothing happens. Now there is red circle. I don’t know what means red circle.

I eat packing peanut. It gives me idea. Maybe I talk to Pandora in my language. I write fool’s version of my language saying _continue_ in box. It is fool’s version because I am not having letters of my language.

Still is red circle.

I eat another packing peanut. Oh. It comes to me like revelation. Pandora is not speaking my language. No one is speaking my language since the Devil’s men come from the East wearing red and rape my land. I write _continue_ in Russian. It is language that is brother of my language and also language that Pandora speaks. Compromise.

Now is green circle. Her face changes. I see total badass. Badass is me.

Ha! Ha! I laugh. I move clicker and change small version of me. I put weapon in hand. I change clothes. I make jump.

This is vision from God and Pandora. Vision of my soul. Or past. Or future. I can be badass girl. I stay there in Pandora’s box eating packing peanuts for long time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i fucking love helena


	7. alison hendrix's no good, terrible, very bad day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alison gets some bad news and doesn't overreact at all.

>canada

>toronto, on

                I make my to-do list every morning. I have a pad of yellow paper with butterflies around the rim, and I stick it up on the fridge to guide my day. No chaos, no empty chunks of time - just my yellow-and-pink butterflies guiding me through the day. It’s like yoga meditation for my schedule.

                Today -

1.)    Sweep, mop, and dust living room carpet and wood floors

2.)    Cupcakes for book club

3.)    Check up on Donnie

4.)    Clinic appt. @ 2:30

5.)    Achieve level 20 in L.O. -- 40% of the way to extra credit! J

6.)    Start dinner @ 5:00

Donnie’s still finishing up a few classes for his degree. It was so hard for him to finish in just four years, what with all those training sessions and away games and the like. It’s not his fault, really. And he’s just not meant for sitting in a chair and reading all day. Of course, he can’t play for Toronto anymore, so he’ll be able to get it done quite neatly now.

(I graduated a year early, by the way.)

I check his grades online - I have all his passwords - and help him out with his homework. He’s finishing his English requirement (who knows why they make business kids take it, anyway!) so I edit his essays. Well, sometimes I write the parts he has trouble with, like the intros and conclusions. Well, he really has trouble with essays in general. So sometimes I write the whole thing for him. Shhhhh!

He’ll graduate this semester, though. Then he’ll go to work at the accounting firm his dad’s friend is a partner at, and every morning he’ll look dapper in his suit and briefcase and kiss me on the cheek. He’ll say _Goodbye, honey!_ And I’ll send the kids off with box lunches and hugs and cute notes reminding them to eat their apples.

But make no mistake, I’m not a deadbeat physiology makes me a “valuable asset”, Mr. Liu says. I like him better than the other chiropractor, housewife! I work three days a week at the chiropractic clinic as a technician. My degree in Mr. Lee. But I’m not going to get into all that now.

I’m running late. I have to do my weekly Donnie-check (he always gets so embarrassed when I call it that, sweet man) and get to my appointment at the clinic.

 _Ooooooh_. A D, dear husband? You got a D on that test we worked so hard to prepare you for?! You _have_ to meet that GPA cap. You _know_ that _._ You’d better _pray_ the final is a take-home! Donnie, please, work harder for me (I work so hard for you!) because I need you to get your degree and work at the firm so I can have my beautiful mess-free life like I’ve always wanted and - I _can’t_ have made a mistake, not with you, not with every decision I’ve made that has led me to this house and this husband - I _can’t_ turn around now - I’m trapped  - You can’t be a failure and _we_ can’t be a failure  - I remember when you gave me that beautiful ring and I was so happy then and so unhappy now - I can’t -

I can see the cracks forming in my vision, the falling apart of poor Alison who tried so hard to be good.

My timer rings, telling me to go to my appointment. I can’t breathe. I can’t I can’t I can’t do anything. I have to. I have to go. My hands are shaking, I can’t drive. I have to drive. I have to get there. The doctor has to tell me everything’s going to be alright.

Thank God there’s a bottle of Pinot in the fridge.

I have a _teensy,_ eensy glass to soothe my nerves. As I gulp it down (no, I don’t gulp, I sip, I was not raised in a pigsty, Mother raised me right as I will raise my children in the upstairs bedroom that will _not_ be yellow) as I sip it, the cold beverage soothes the roughness in my throat and head. It’s probably the placebo effect, even. I don’t even really _need_ alcohol to calm down. But just having a glass of something makes my thoughts even out. Probably San Pellegrino would work just as well. But we happen to have wine and - it’s not a crime to have a glass of wine at 2:00 pm, is it? Half a glass.

As I drive to the clinic I feel the cool buzzing spread its way through my stomach, up my chest and down into my hips, and out through my arms and legs where they engage with the car. I’m starting to feel like I might have had _ever so slightly_ more than one glass. Have I eaten today? I can’t remember. I fish in my purse for mints and get honked at when I don’t respond quickly enough to the light change. I pop four or five mints in my mouth.

Follow the car in front of you. Keep pace, keep an even distance. Slowly now. No, wait, he’s turning. Go straight. Ha! Keep your eye on a spot far ahead, Ali, like you learned in Driver’s Ed. There we go. No one will know. I’m fine, Officer, how are you? Almost there.

I’m in the parking lot. I have five minutes until I should go in. I must have driven faster than I’d realized. Oh, gosh darn it. I’m too tipsy to be here. The doctor will know. But I don’t freak out when I realize that. I find it a little funny. Ali’s drunk at the doctor’s office, I think. I repeat it to myself, _Ali’s drunk at the doctor’s office_. Who cares!I giggle to myself and swallow three more mints. My depth perception has gone kinda _wonky!_ But I’m not driving anymore, so I’m okay. I’m parked. I’m drunk at the doctor’s office. It’s funny!

It’s time. I’m getting out of my car before I even realize it. I struggle a little with the door handle, but I’m clumsy. That could happen to me any day.

“How are you today, Mrs. Hendrix?” asks the receptionist politely (she doesn’t actually care). _Mrs. Hendrix._ Ma-Ma-Ma-Married. It makes me smile. It was a perfect wedding, and I was a perfect bride. So beautiful, I was - slim and white and lacey - my stomach flat from the regime of pilates that I followed like a religion for months before the wedding - and my stomach now buzzing full of wine and soon to be happily swollen. I’ve got it all, haven’t I? I can’t stop smiling.

“Fine, thank you,” I say. I sound normal. She doesn’t know. Nobody knows. I’m undercover - _shhhh_. I’m a good actress. “Is he -“ I ask, gesturing towards the office.

“Yes, he’s ready for you,” she says.

I go in. I sit down. There he is. I smile at him - I’m so personable - I’m quite charismatic, I’ve been told. Someone once said I should be an actress (have I said that already?). I must be quite the darling patient - pretty, undemanding, polite. I’m probably the best patient he’s ever had. He’s probably in love with me.

While I’m thinking about that he’s talking to me but I’m not really listening. Problem, he says, there’s a problem. Ha! There can’t be a problem! I’ve done everything right. Maybe I don’t understand. He keeps saying sciencey words and things like “uterus” and “percentage” and I don’t understand.

He slides some pamphlets across the desk. _Adopting and You._ Adopting? Adopting what?

“You might think about some other options,” he says. I look at the pamphlets. _Surrogacy,_ says another.

The cracks start forming again, splintering off and spreading like cancer even through the adhesive bandage that is my dearest darling Pinot Grigio. It isn’t fair, it isn’t fair. Stupid teenagers do this, teenagers who louse about at the mall all day and wear Crocs. Crocs!

 My head feels like it’s under heavy weights from all sides so I put it down on the desk and curl up into the comfort, the draping sweater of my own arms and shoulders. The enormous pressure and swirling duststorm inside me forces itself out of my mouth in a warbling, banshee wail so that, just in case today was bad enough, surely everyone in the entire clinic can hear Alison Hendrix making a fool of herself in room B2. Everything is falling apart, shaking me apart like the shoddy clapboard foundations of a house caught in an earthquake. The in vitro attempt has failed. It was a failure. We did everything right. We spent so much money. And it is _me,_ it is _my_ fault, my mucked-up womb that defeats my biological purpose, negates the endgame of every human life, that throws a glass in the face of thousands and thousands of years of human evolution. In spite of all those hours in Pilates, in spite of all my baton trophies.  

I’m going to go home, right now. And I’m going to get that glass of Pinot Grigio and whatever we have in the cabinet, go upstairs, and play Leda like a complete degenerate loser virgin with Cheeto fingers who still lives with his parents - and I’m going to drink until I forget and kill three thousand goblin minions or whatever Leda throws at me that has nothing to do with my womb. And I’m not going to start dinner at 5:00. Because who even cares about dinner.


	8. песня первый встречи / song of the first meeting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our favorite thief gets out-thiefed.

>usa

>new york city, ny

>the bronx

                Jesus fucking Christ, I hate people.

                See, there’s “stealing” and then there’s _stealing._ What I do is “stealing”. ‘Cause half the time people give their shit to me on their own steam, anyway. And the other half of the time they deserve what’s coming.

                Example - “stealing”. A girl on the underground in a polo shirt drinking Starbucks with one hand and trying to refasten her awful gaudy drag queen necklace with the other. If I come up and go, “hey, can I help you with that?” and she says go ahead - well, might be her shitty necklace goes around her neck and her diamond bracelet goes into my sleeve. That would be “stealing” because people who drink Starbuck are horrid, and people who wear polo shirts are double that. Plus I let her have the stupid necklace, which was very St. Nick of me.

                I’m getting too old for lifting scams, though. These days it’s mostly me and Leo hustling pool and selling cut powder. Bigger margins, you know. Mumsie Bird laying a nest egg to retire on. And by retire I mean working bloody boring normal-people jobs and trying to keep our noses clean. But maybe I’m getting out of the drug trade for a while. Turns out junkies get mad when they figure out you’ve been swindling them out of their hard-stolen money. Like, beat-you-with-a-stick mad. And that would be why my ankle looks like somebody shoved an orange up my trouser leg. For such a skinny little bugger, he was pretty strong. Least Nick and his blessed motorbike came through in time.

                Shit. I gotta find a new neighborhood to sell if I get back in it after my ankle heals up. Shit, shit, shit.

                I been saying to Leo and Nick, next job we run is passing off Canola for truffle oil in the Village. I tell you those hug-an-orphan handmade free-range fair-trade hemp handbags carry a lot of cash just begging to be wasted on dumb shit. And I’m pretty sure hippies or whatever have some kind of nonviolence thing. I think it’s brilliant. Leo just laughs and laughs, though.

                Yeah. Right. So, stealing and stealing.

                Lemme tell you about _stealing_ and why I fucking hate people.

                I worked five fucking hours for that silver chest. Five fucking hours sitting on my ass until my eyes felt like they were going to pop out of my skull and I forgot I was a human being. Then finally I’m beating down on Zeroth the Ogre King for the last fucking time and there she is. The drop rate finally falls in my favor. And what a beaut. The Silver Chest of the Rage of Zeroth in all her glory - and inside, inside’s what counts. The Quicksilver Sword of the Ogre King.

                Well, right, I can’t use it what with being an Assassin and all, but neither can she, eh? What’s it to her?

                I’ll tell you what it is to me. It’s proof. It’s that first legitimate seed that’s going to build me my rep and make them look twice at me. When they look twice, that’s when I smile, and that’s when I got them.

                All I need is a few things. The Quicksilver Sword of the Ogre King and maybe a few other items. I got a mate that knows his way around Photoshop or whatever. And I got my proper young lady voice. People kind of trust girls, you know? ‘Specially gamer blokes that haven’t ever seen one in real life. So when I go high pitched and put on my Queen’s English (it’s not great, but it works on the Americans) they say - oh, this one knows what she’s talking about, boy, I should listen and give her all my money.

                Only no, that’s not how it turned out. Here I go again for five more hours because of that fucking savage whore bitch. Tore up behind me like she’s Usain Bolt, fucking hopped straight over me and snatched the Sword of the Ogre King basically right out of my damn hands. First I thought she wasn’t real, she was a loot-bot or whatever, but then this mad bitch goes to the chatbox for whatever reason and says…

                **prodolzhite:** _what is cunt ??_

So I says:

                **cuntslayer332:** _youre a cunt_

And right after I realize she’s asking about my username, and I don’t think loot-bots are trained to do that. ‘Sides, what kind of gamer doesn’t know the word _cunt?_ That’s like vocab 101 in this world. That’s how I establish my legitimacy behind my shiny silver sword that I fucking want back already. Can’t really tell what kind of player she is, if she’s good or not. Can’t even see her avatar properly cause she’s got the novice’s Assassin hood just like me. (Gotta get rid of that n00b gear soon, though.)

                **cuntslayer332:** _give me back the sword dammit_

**cunstlayer332:** _its mine_

She looks around for a bit and I start to get a bit unnerved, for whatever reason, like maybe she is a robot after all and I’ve done something it isn’t programmed to respond to. More like, she’s gone to use the loo and left me to shout at nobody. But then I get a response.

                **prodolzhite:** _cunt is not in dictionary or bible_

Don't know what she's babbling about, if this is some kind of wacko Christian crusade programmed into the profanity filter.

**cuntslayer332:** _look_

**cuntslayer332:** _i won that thing fair and square_

“Fair and square?” I can practically Felix squawking derisively. “Since when has _fair and square_ had anything to do with _you?”_

**prodolzhite:** _i will give sword back if you tell me what means cunt_

**cuntslayer332:** _alright alright. cunt means like a girl’s private parts, but it actually means a nasty or bitchy girl._

There’s a long pause. I wait for the trade window to open. I sort of can’t believe I’m having this conversation in a video game.

                **prodolzhite:** _oh now i am understanding_

**prodolzhite:** _yes, i am cunt_

**prodolzhite:** _goodbye_

Then that cunt teleports away with my sword. I ball up my fists and

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apparently I'm still alive. not sure if I'm going to continue this permanently but found this unfinished chapter on my computer from several months ago.


End file.
